The unfortunate truth is that AI isn’t going away, and we as artists need to learn how to use that to our advantage. Let’s take a look at NYC-based food and hospitality photographer Michael Condran has to say about this subject.

Website: michaelcondran.com

Instagram: @micharlcondran

Describe your signature style or approach to photography.

I started my career as a cinematographer and I think that has created the basis of my style as a photographer. I love telling stories and painting with light as if I were blocking a scene in a film. One of my early mentors once said that good cinematography is when the audience doesn’t notice it and that’s something that I also try to keep in mind. The main thing I set out to do with every project is to create images that elicit simple, visceral emotions without pretense; if it’s a travel or lifestyle image, it needs to be transportive. If it’s a food image, I want to make people hungry. For me, this is the foundation that photographic style can then be built on top of.

What equipment, platforms, or tools are essential for you as a commercial photographer?

I love Found Artists. They have been so supportive of me over the years and I could not recommend them more highly. Awesome team. A good marketing consultant is also essential and well worth the investment. I work with Julie Skarwecki and she’s amazing.

What emerging trends or technologies in commercial photography excite you the most? or scare you?

I guess the elephant in this room is AI. It has the potential to have a frightening impact on our industry and – in the short term at least – a devastating effect on a lot of people’s livelihoods. Inevitably, I think (hope?) it will eventually become just another tool that performs the repetitive and tedious tasks in our industry. 

I saw a great quote from a writer recently that said: “Why would I bother to read something that nobody bothered to write” and I think this could be key. Charles Saatchi described advertising as being an uninvited guest in people’s homes, inferring that to have your message welcomed, you have to engage with your audience in a way that resonates. Once the novelty of AI generated images wears off, advertisers will eventually realize that consumers aren’t engaging with the generic imagery and will be looking to artists again to gain an edge. 

I’ve been shooting a lot of personal projects on film over the last couple of years and I’m always blown away by the amount of people lined up at the labs when I’m dropping off the film, both here in New York and in Europe. You look around and you see that people are reading actual books and journaling with pen and paper. There’s an appetite for things that are “real” and I’m confident that will prevail.

Can you describe a moment in your career when you felt particularly proud of your work?

I absolutely love seeing an excited client at the end of a shoot and it’s always a buzz to see the work in the wild but I also think it’s healthy to be (internally) a little critical of it. I feel it’s really important to always be learning and at the end of a shoot, I like to think about what I would have done differently with the hindsight of everything I learned during the process. As a cinematographer, I was mentored by some incredible DPs and gaffers that had a burning passion for their craft and that has been a huge influence on me as a photographer. I love what I do and I really want to be better at it. 

What is the one piece of equipment that you can’t go on set without?

I’m obsessed with my Zeiss primes. I have eight (or as some of my assistants say: “a problem”?). I love the sharpness and contrast and they work so well with the sensor of the Nikon D850s I use for most of my commercial work. 

How do you ensure your portfolio stays up-to-date with your best and most current work?

This is something I find challenging and I’m looking forward to reading how other photographers answer this question. I do a lot of lifestyle work for large corporate brands, who I absolutely love working with but they mostly have strict policies regarding usage of the images. Because of this, I often can’t use them to update my portfolio, or post as new work on social media. 

I try to counter this by constantly shooting personal projects, which I think is absolutely crucial. It’s not a perfect solution to the portfolio issue, because the personal work I like to do is usually stuff that takes me out of my comfort zone and that work isn’t always the sort of thing that checks the boxes for my target client base. As an artist, it keeps me fresh and inspired but I often end up with a bunch of work I’m happy with and nowhere to show it. I guess this comes back to the way our industry likes to pigeonhole photographers into a single style, which I think is really unhealthy but I feel you need to keep challenging yourself to become a better photographer.

Are there any causes or charitable organizations you’re passionate about supporting?

I’ve been working for years with a wonderful organization in Jamaica called the Rockhouse Foundation. Created by one of my clients, the Rockhouse Hotel in Negril, it’s been building, renovating, and running schools in the under serviced west end of Jamaica for the last 20 years. Its current ongoing project is the ground-up build of the Savanna-la-Mar Inclusive Academy, a K – 12 school in Westmoreland. Before construction, there were no services for children with special needs outside of Kingston, 5 hours away at the other end of the island. The school is an inclusive model, where typical learning children are side by side in classrooms with children with disabilities. The Foundation also provides physiotherapists, speech therapists, and other specialists, who work with the special needs kids every day in one-to-one breakout sessions. I’m often in Jamaica shooting for hotels and it’s been a life changing experience seeing the progress of these kids, who would have otherwise had very few opportunities in these remote communities.

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